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Data release for event GW151226

This page has been prepared by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration to inform the broader community about a
confirmed astrophysical event observed by the gravitational-wave detectors, and to make the data around that time available for others to analyze.

The event occurred at GPS time 1135136350.65 == December 26 2015, 03:38:53.65 UTC.
It was recovered with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a significance of greater than 5 sigma.
The event was detected in data from the
LIGO Hanford and
LIGO Livingston
observatories.

This page serves as a supplement to the paper
"GW151226: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a 22 Solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence"
which is available from LIGO DCC.

There is more information about this event in a companion paper
"Binary Black Hole Mergers in the first Advanced LIGO Observing Run",
which is available from LIGO DCC.

There is more open data about this event, in the files attached to the above paper
in the LIGO DCC.

The md5 checksums provide a check for downloaders that they have received the right file: run the Unix command "md5" (or "md5sum", depending on your OS) on your file and compare to LOSC published values. If different, try downloading again, and if the problem persists, contact us.

FIG. 2. Search results from the two binary coalescence searches using their respective detection statistics ρ_c (left) and ln L
(right) with GW150914 removed in all cases.

Sky localization

Sky localization was provided at low-latency by the BAYESTAR and CWB pipelines, and later with LALInference.
After all the data and calibration was finalized, the LALInference skymap was made again,
and it is the "best" skymap, therefore we put it first.

A python library for reading such files is
healpy.
A very simple healpy code to work with LIGO-Virgo skymaps is
here.
A large number of simulated skymaps is available
here and
here.

Audio Files

These files are derived from the strain data above, through signal processing
as defined in the tutorial notebook "Tutorial on Binary Black Hole Signals in LIGO Open Data", that can be found in the tutorials section of this website.

The GEO600 Detector

The GEO600 project aims at the
direct detection of gravitational waves by means of a laser
interferometer of 600 m armlength located near Hannover, Germany.
Besides collecting data for gravitational wave searches, the GEO600
detector has been used to develop and test advanced instrumentation for
gravitational wave detection.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration
(LSC) is a group of scientists
seeking to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves, use
them to explore the fundamental physics of gravity, and develop the
emerging field of gravitational wave science as a tool of astronomical
discovery. The LSC works toward this goal through research on, and
development of techniques for, gravitational wave detection, and the
development, commissioning and exploitation of gravitational wave
detectors.
The LSC carries out the science of the LIGO and GEO600 Observatories.
Participation in the LSC is open to all interested
scientists and engineers from educational and research institutions.